Amelia’s Magazine | Infinitely Precious Things: Jewel Paintings by Paula MacArthur

Category: Art

MacArthur Everything I've had but couldn't keep 140x140cm oil on canvas 72

Paula MacArthur, Everything I've had but couldn't keep, 140x140cm oil on canvas.

Paula MacArthur’s recent series of large scale canvases focuses on jewels. Enlarged a thousand times these tiny stones transform into celestial entities. These paintings are a personal celebration of love and over time have come to encompass universal desires and obsessions. Working with viscous paint beside pools of barely tinted turps and using exaggerated intense colour the artist pushes the medium towards the extremes of its capabilities. Working quickly and instinctively MacArthur places colour onto the canvas working with wet on wet glazes, merging oily translucent layers with the brush and dropping colour, allowing it to bleed and grow into the surface.

MacArthur Let me be your eyes 140x140cm oil on canvas

Let me be your eyes, 140x140cm oil on canvas.

From a distance brush marks and the trails of running paint are invisible, the paintings appear cohesive, even photographic, then as the viewer approaches the images disintegrate. The paint becomes as ephemeral as the jewel’s sparkle, the focus moves from the gemstone to the physicality of the paint and echoes the elusive ideals these minute treasures symbolise.

MacArthur Now & forever 3x2m 72-480

Now & Forever, 3x2m.

MacArthur There are problems in these times 140x140cm oil on canvas72-480

There are problems in these times, 140x140cm oil on canvas.

Paula MacArthur lives in Kent and works from her studio in Rye, East Sussex. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools Paula has won several awards, she has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has work in major collections. You can view a biography here
 
MacArthur Tell me love is real 140x140cm oil on canvas 72-480

Tell me love is real, 140x140cm oil on canvas.

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